Okay, Greek-Island Noir Teaming Gordon-Levitt, Woodley

A good, tasteful noir like Love Lies Bleeding always feels contemporary, even if it’s set in the past; That’s because it should feel as urgent as the love and death it’s about. “Killer Heat,” on the other hand, isn’t quite so dated that it creaks, but it definitely plays like a mirage of detective noirs you’ve seen before. First of all, could there be a worse title? This makes the film sound like a straight-from-the-80s potboiler starring Jim Belushi and Daphne Zuniga. “Killer Heat” opens with the voice of its star Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who sounds somewhat like Keanu Reeves’ wiser brother) delivering one of those “hard-boiled” philosophical nuggets to the audience (“The Icarus myth took place on the island of Crete. And apparently no one there had learned much from his story…”).

But just as you’re ready to nod off, Gordon-Levitt, as a private detective named Nick Bali wearing a hipster island fedora, meets Shailene Woodley, the wealthy captive wife of a Crete-based shipping company CEO. Her husband’s brother fell to his death while free soloing on a vertical rock face. However, it is clear to them that a crime was involved. Woodley has a special version of the (I thought the critics missed how powerful this was in Ferrari, despite her smooth Italian accent.) Her character, Penelope Vardakis (without an accent this time), has asked Nick to investigate the case, but he completely has to be depressed – little about that, because the Vardakis family controls the police and rules more or less everyone else on the island.

The first thing we learn is that husband Elias and his late brother Leo were identical twins. They’re both played by Scottish actor Richard Madden, who’s so good-looking as Ryan Seacrest that it takes a moment to realize he can actually act. Most of the time he plays Elias, who rules the island with violence and blackmail and acts like it; his feathers are slightly ruffled. But then in a flashback, Madden plays the much nicer Leo, who was the first of the two brothers to fall in love with Penelope. They met in Oxford, where we watch the two come into contact with each other. Then Elias shows up and does something sneaky and interesting: Through a secret text message, he arranges a study date for Leo with Penelope and then seemingly shows up in her room He was Leo. Shades of David Cronenberg’s 1988 Dead Ringers (in which Jeremy Irons played perverted gynecologists with identical twins).

The bedroom scene between Penelope and Elias-as-a-lion is effective (you could almost say it has murderous heat), so much so that I wish the film had gone even further in that direction: more underhanded imitation, more contrasts between the two brothers. But we soon return to the present, where “Killer Heat” is just a murderous love triangle, although the legs of the triangle are rearranged a bit. Did Penelope and Leo have an affair? And how did Leo’s murder come about? These are some of the usual things that Nick investigates with a local police officer (Babou Ceesay).

“Killer Heat” is based on “The Jealousy Man,” a short story by hugely popular Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø, and whatever intrigue was on the page has been largely quelled by the film, where the unraveling of the twists is palpable rather like connecting dots. Director Philippe Lacôte does a good job of unfolding the story, but somehow everything lacks… heat. Maybe that’s because he wants the dots he connects to be sentimental. Nick keeps drinking bottles of whiskey because he suppresses his grief over the family he lost. His wife Monique (Abbey Lee) had an affair, so the film’s theme of murderous jealousy is reflected in his own story. But the way it’s resolved makes it all a touch too tidy: a film noir that ends with a feel-good whitewash.